Annual women’s hockey tournament slated for this weekend

HUNTSVILLE - It is one of the biggest and the longest running women’s hockey tournament in Ontario, and it’s on this coming weekend.
The 36th annual Huntsville Girls Hockey Association tournament will take place at the two Huntsville arenas, as well as rinks in Burk’s Falls and Baysville, starting this Friday morning.
Fifty-eight teams and 1,500 players, coaches and officials will be in the region to partake in the annual event, according to tournament organizer Kerri Vallentin.
“Most of our teams have young players, so there will be a number of parents and family members travelling with them,” she said. “All of our teams are from Ontario, and this is a sanctioned event by the Ontario Women’s Hockey Association.”
This is the third year the association has hosted its tournament in an expanded format, made possible by having the two ice pads in town.
This type of large-scale tournament is common in women’s hockey since all the teams are under the Ontario Women’s Hockey Association, where boys’ teams are under the Ontario Minor Hockey Association and men’s teams are under other umbrellas, such as the Ontario Hockey Association.
The OWHA covers all girls’ teams and is able to arrange tournaments featuring teams with a mix of all ages.
Teams from atoms to senior hockey, house league to rep, will be playing in this weekend’s event.
Squads representing places such as Timmins, Caledon, Lindsay, Ottawa, Etobicoke, Kirkland Lake and North Bay will take on the two Huntsville entries, the Huntsville Sting peewee B team and the Huntsville Honeys senior C team, during the course of the three-day tournament.
The event is the largest hockey tournament in the Muskoka region, and is believed to be the largest women’s competition of its kind north of Toronto.
Vallentin, who is also a member of the Honeys’ team, said that the tournament has proved to be quite popular in women’s hockey circles.
“I think people like coming to Huntsville, they enjoy the atmosphere of the town. They like the variety of the arenas that we use. We started registration back in September and our deadline was in December, but we filled the tournament up sometime back in November ... and we still have teams contacting us, trying to get into our tournament but we have had to turn them away.”
The sanctioned tournament is used by teams to assist them in qualifying for the OWHA playdowns, which will be held within the next few months.
“Any teams that are hoping to play in the provincials do have to attend a certain number of OWHA –sanctioned games, said Vallentin.
A complete listing of all the teams and game times can be found at the HGHA website, www.huntsvillegha.com.